Aircraft radars are commonly housed inside a radome. A radome is a housing specially designed to be transparent at the radar's frequencies. Over time, the radome can accumulate defects that interfere with radar signals. Radome degradation traditionally requires the radome to be replaced.
Also, some radars have ESAs. ESAs are antennas composed of a number of radiating elements. By manipulating the signal sent to each radiating element, a computer can alter the direction of a signal transmitted by an ESA. ESAs can degrade over time as radiating elements of the ESA fail.
Also, some radars have distribution manifolds that split or distribute the transmitted signal to the individual or groups of ESA elements. The manifold may also combine radar return signals from individual or groups of ESA radiating elements. The amplitude and phase of signals passing through the distribution manifold may vary over time from aging effects such as temperature cycling, component variation, or vibrations. These variations can cause the radar beam to be sufficiently degraded as to require the radar to be removed from the aircraft for repair or replacement.
Radome degradations, ESA failures, and Distribution Manifold variations adversely impact the usable life of a radar system and impose maintenance requirements. The useable life of radomes and ESA based radars could be extended if they could be re-calibrated and optimized to account for certain degradations.
Consequently, it would be advantageous if an apparatus existed that is suitable for optimizing and calibrating an ESA radar in a radome and/or radiating elements in an ESA radar in a radome.